a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wiper destined for use in an outside mirror device of a vehicle to wipe the mirror surface thereof.
b) Prior Art Statement
Some of the recent outside mirrors for vehicles are provided with a wiper to wipe away raindrops or dust from the mirror surface.
FIG. 1 is a front view of a typical one of such conventional mirror wipers. As seen, the mirror device is composed of a mirror holder 100, a mirror proper 102 fixed to the mirror holder 100 and a mirror housing 104 supporting the mirror holder 100. The mirror housing 104 is supported by a mirror base 108 fixed on a car body. The mirror wiper has a wiper arm 110 installed on a wiper arm shaft 112 which is provided through the mirror housing 104. When the wiper arm shaft 112 is reciprocally turned, the wiper arm 110 carrying a wiper blade 101 is reciprocally deflected and thus the wiper blade 101 wipes the reflecting surface of the mirror proper 102.
As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional mirror wiper spoils the appearance of the mirror device and also limits the effective reflecting area of the mirror surface because the wiper arm 110 and wiper blade 101 remain on the mirror surface even while the wiper is out of wiping operation.
Assume now that a penthouse-like wiper receptacle 106 (indicated with an imaginary line in FIG. 1) is provided at the upper portion of the mirror housing 104. The wiper blade 101 can be concealed as placed under the wiper receptacle 106, but the wire am 110 cannot. Further, the wiper arm 110 and wiper blade 101 have a relatively large inertia. The drive to reciprocally move these members has to be of a high precision. If the precision is not, high (there is a backlash between the members), they will generate a noise.